The tedious manipulation and interpretation of hazardous material detection equipment becomes problematic during actual use in field operations. Add the complication of cumbersome protective gear and a dynamic multi-component hazardous environment can create chaos in many hazardous incident response scenarios. Many of these incidents will directly challenge the user of a disparate and complex detection equipment suite. At present, there exists a wide range of chemical sensors employing a wide range of direct and indirect detection methodologies deployed to detect and identify the presence of hazardous environments. Hazardous materials teams responding to hazardous incidents and military combatants on the battlefield can be faced with an increasingly complex mixture of airborne hazards.
Most military and civilian response to these unknown hazard scenarios use an unintegrated deployment of currently fielded/marketed detectors. The chronological use, interpretation and fusion of information are in many instances ad hoc and certainly not a timely utilization of the data at hand.